Creating change with your homepage

In the spirit of holiday giving, we've partnered with nonprofit organizations to create themes that showcase the change they are helping to create. With iGoogle Themes for Causes, you can show your support for the cause that inspires you most by adding that theme to your iGoogle page.

Our partners in iGoogle Themes for Causes span a variety of areas including the environment, international development, education, health, civil rights, and disaster relief. They include organizations like Heifer International, Oxfam America, Ashoka, Doctors without Borders, Save the Children, charity:water, and Conservation International — just to name a few. We're honored to help these organizations increase their reach by making their themes available to the millions of iGoogle users around the world who care about the great work they're doing.

The intent of these themes is to raise awareness as well as donations. Each theme has a "Donate" link that appears in the upper right-hand corner to make your holiday donations easier. We also encourage you to share your favorite Theme for a Cause with your family and friends.

We hope you find your favorite cause among our new themes and can make it a part of your homepage.

Announced by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience, and Michaela Prescott, Senior Product Marketing Manager

What's new with iGoogle?

I'm an iGoogle addict. I check my news, email, stocks, feeds and weather there and sometimes even manage to squeeze in a game or two during the day. Having everything in one place is super convenient, but I often wish I could deal with all my stuff without having to leave my iGoogle page. With today's release, I can. We've rolled out an updated design for iGoogle to all U.S. users, which includes full canvas views for gadget and support for full feed reading.

Not all of our gadgets have canvas views yet, but here are some of the best:

• News - New gadgets from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post give me full-page views of what's new in the world. Nice.
• Games - The Sudoku gadget lets me play thousands of full-page Sudoku puzzles without squinting at 6-point type. The GoComics gadget gives me my fix of Garfield and Doonesbury and lets me choose from all of their other comics. I've also spent many coffee breaks browsing through videos from YouTube and CurrentTV.
  
• Entertainment - I've configured the TV Guide gadget to my zip code and just used it today to figure out when the newest episode of The Office is playing. Flixster's movies gadget lets me access trailers, ratings, and theater information for any movie. I also use the iLike gadget to browse news, concerts, and free MP3s from my favorite musicians.
• Google stuff - The new Gmail gadget lets me read my full email and perform simple actions like send or reply to emails without leaving iGoogle. Last but not least, a gadget that I authored and use every day is for Google Finance, which provides full-screen finance charts and news of the stocks in my portfolio.

Here's a full list of our highlighted canvas view gadgets.

We've also replaced the tabs at the top with a left navigation that allows for access to any gadget with one click. We're very excited about these changes because it makes iGoogle a more useful homepage and a better platform for developers. And this is just the beginning: Expect to see more canvas gadgets created by developers and more new features on iGoogle soon. Not in the U.S.? Don't worry. We'll also be rolling out this updated version in other countries very soon.

Announced by Matt Gundersen, iGoogle Engineer

Google iGoogle

iGoogle is your personalized Google page. Add news, photos, weather, and stuff from across the web to your page.
Google offers the ability to create a personalized iGoogle page that gives you at-a-glance access to key information from Google and across the web. On this self-designed page, you can choose and organize content such as:
> Your latest Gmail messages
> Headlines from Google News and other top news sources
> Weather forecasts, stock quotes, and movie showtimes
> Bookmarks for quick access to your favorite sites from any computer
> Your own section with content you find from across the web

iGoogle is compatible with the following browsers:

- Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x (Windows XP)
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.x (Windows XP, Windows Vista)
- Mozilla Firefox 1.5+ (Windows XP)
- Mozilla Firefox 2.x (Windows XP, Vista, Mac OSX, Linux)
- Safari 3 (Mac OSX)
- Netscape 7.1 (Windows XP)
- Opera 9.1+ (Windows XP)

To get the full functionality of iGoogle, make sure you have the latest version of your browser. Please note that you'll need to enable JavaScript to view and edit your iGoogle page. For instructions on enabling JavaScript, please consult your browser's help pages.

Related: IGoogle Help
Related: Features